by A. L. Woods
“You brought me to Heritage Park?” It was a few blocks north of Penelope and Dougie’s new place. People here were cut from the same Mulberry silk cloth as the Cullimores: Affluent WASPs with a closet full of polo shirts, and a side piece that did all the kinky shit their spouses weren’t into.
Mayor Murphy included.
“Yeah. I wanna show you something,” Sean said. He pulled the Wrangler into a circular driveway of a darkened house that stood out like a sore thumb amongst the pristine collection of otherwise impressive homes. The dilapidated First Period English American colonial not only looked entirely out of place amongst the opulence—it was plain fucking ugly. And I’m not talking about ugly duckling turned swan princess, I’m talking no chance in hell unless you took a wrecking ball to the thing and started over.
“Where are we?” I asked with unease as the Jeep came to a stop in the circular driveway.
“Come and find out.” Sean shot me a toothy grin that at any other time would have been an absolute panty melter. Right now, in front of what was on par with 1428 Elm Street, I wasn’t convinced my death wouldn’t be imminent.
“You want me to go in there?” I wavered, swallowing hard. I leaned forward in my seat, the seat belt wheezing in protest while I peered up at the ominous, darkened house.
He couldn’t be serious.
“Are you scared?” He chuckled.
I whipped my head in his direction, my face twisting with bewilderment. Scared? Had he not seen Nightmare on Elm Street? People like us died in houses like these. That stupid nursery rhyme rang off like a litany in my mind that put my hackles on end and my mind on high alert.
Sean reached out and cupped my chin, the coarse pads of his digits igniting an eruption of goosebumps across my skin and subdued my nerves, killing the parodied song in my brain.
That drunken heat slammed into me again. I released the breath I was holding, the warmth of my arousal settling into my skin and making my whole body hum in a way that yearned for him to touch me. As though reading my thoughts, he undid his seatbelt and leaned over the center console, his thumb finding the ejection on my belt.
“Hemingway, Hemingway, Hemingway.” His voice strained, reaching forward to pull me into his lap. There was a duality in this moment. My fear of the house and him. They both felt like imposing figures that commanded all my attention with the enormity of their presence. And where they both consumed my thoughts, they were the unequivocal cause of the steady beat of my heart that thrummed in a way it never had before. A fear of what could be lost paired with the first taste of real life at the same time was like a treat that was both savory and sweet.
I worried my lip with my teeth, as his hands settled on my hips, his fingers locking around my belt loops to pull me closer, and my body went willingly. His dark eyes were roguish as they assessed me, his crooked smile slipping into something sly.
“I can hear your heartbeat,” he murmured, releasing his hold on my belt loop to settle his palm over the urgent thumping of my heart. “What are you afraid of?”
Dying and missing out on more moments like these.
My eyebrows shot north as that unspoken realization settled over me, filling my pores and the empty crevices of my mind. I had spent a decade before this moment not caring when or if it was my time, drinking myself into stupors without worry about the ramifications, smoking until plumes filled my apartment or the inside of my car. Indulging on what was bad for me. Starving myself of what was good.
Right up until him.
He had flipped my whole world upside down, undid everything I had ever known, all while reminding me that even after death, the world keeps turning.
I wanted to see what life had in store for me. I wanted to see what was next. I wanted to feel it.
With him.
I watched as that playful look left his face, his expression growing dire as he straightened in his seat.
“Hey, wh—”
I cut him off, slanting my mouth over his, sinking my newfound awareness into the intensity of that kiss. The house wasn’t so scary now. The burden of my worries lifted from my shoulders as his body relaxed under my kiss. Sean’s fingers threaded into my hair, tightening at the base of my neck to hold me still, his teeth grazing my bottom lip, demanding access that I readily gave him. His tongue circled mine, the sweet notes of maple syrup and coffee lingering there that elicited a moan out of me.
He broke our kiss, his breaths coming hard and fast. “You make the sexiest little sounds.” Sean settled against the seat, his hooded eyes tracing over me like he couldn’t believe any more than I could that I was here with him, in his lap, parked in front of a house that looked like it belonged on the set of a horror movie.
My hips shifted in his lap, my core grinding against him in the most tantalizing kind of way that extracted a groan of approval from him. I worked across him in languorous figure eight motions, the friction against my clit sending every hair on my body upright. I could feel my heartbeat in the tips of my fingers as they sank into the stretch of his firm shoulders, my body swiveling atop of his as that mounting pleasure created a pulse in my pussy that was making it hard to think.
I wanted him, and I didn’t care about the consequences.
I met his eyes, drowning in the smoldering heat of his drunken stare, watching as the tip of his tongue smoothed across a small, dried crack in his lip, his massive hands leaving my hair to settle on my jiving hips, holding me still.
“Are you going to fuck me, or what?” I said with a smirk.
The color vanished from his face for a split second. Without warning, the driver’s seat slid back roughly as far as it could go. He rolled us over until my back was against the seat, his weight pinned against me. Sean’s knee parted my thighs as his body settled against me.
The pressure of his erection against my core made me writhe beneath him, desperate for more. I had never been this emboldened, this needy, this hungry.
“Is that a ‘yes’?” I croaked.
“No,” he ground out, rolling himself against me. “I’m not.”
Rejection and disappointment sizzled across my skin the dismissal settling in my expression. I was easy. I was here for the taking, and still he wouldn’t act on it.
“Why not?” I demanded.
He met my gaze, his expression an arresting combination of anguish and eroticism.
“Because you deserve better than being fucked in a bar bathroom, on a desk, or in my car.”
“That’s not what your cock says,” I grinned, wrapping my legs around his waist, connecting our groins.
“Of course not.” His breath was shaky, as though he was reconsidering the offer for a moment. Through clenched teeth he added, “But I’m choosing to think with the right head. Let me do right by you, Raquel.”
My insides coiled as his words swept over me. I didn’t know what that meant.
“Stop overthinking it and trust me,” he whispered, his mouth hovering over mine. “You gotta trust me.”
I blew out the breath I’d been holding, lifting my eyes to meet his. “I’m willing and you won’t fuck me.” My cheeks burned, the heat stretching to the tips of my ears as I withered under his stare and my own embarrassment, “So, while I trust you, I can’t help but think you don’t want me.”
“I will fuck you.” He grabbed my hand, his thumb finding the pulse in my palm, giving it a squeeze. “And I do want you.” He settled my other hand against him, and out of instinct, I cupped the thickened outline of his erection. He grunted a curse that ripped from the back of his throat, his eyes burning, jaw steeling.
“I want you bad enough that I’m willing to give myself blue balls just to do things the right way, the way you deserve,” he said. “Do you understand?”
I had never been a woman who had been done right by to begin with, so that concept was as foreign to me as it was new. Whether or not I wanted to, I managed a nod that felt feeble. His smile was a fleeting, whimsical thing that was lost when he press
ed his mouth against mine once more. I accepted the kiss, erupting into laughter as he moved from my mouth and peppered the rest of my face with kisses until I was giggling breathlessly.
Me, giggling.
“Okay, okay. Stop,” I protested.
“Not until you tell me you understand.” He nipped my skin.
“I understand!” I shrieked, choking on my laughter as I turned my head frantically while he left a trail of kisses across my jawline, his coarse beard tickling my skin, sending my body ablaze.
“Not convinced that you do.”
It was impossible to reconcile that this was the same man who weeks ago had behaved like he hadn’t even wanted to be on my radar while I probed him for answers to questions that he skirted around, masking himself like an enigma. It hadn’t been until he pressed me back that I felt myself loosening my hold on what I had always held near and dear to me: control.
Sean made me want to relinquish the hold on the reigns that I had always wrapped tight around my fists. I had wielded it like a shield, sported it like a facade. Control had been all I was left with after everything that had happened.
I couldn’t control people, nor could I control what happened.
But I could control me, and that had always felt like a small respite in some way.
Now, that control felt like a burden that I didn’t want anymore. I had been suffocating under the restraint; the reins I had once cherished and revered had become like shackles at my wrists and neck that threatened to deprive me of the life I never realized I had wanted up until this very night.
Sean made me feel again. After years of feeling nothing, I felt everything.
And for the first time, I wanted to fight for it. For that freedom. For the life. For that possibility at a chance at…well, I didn’t want to say it. It was presumptive. He could be terrible in bed, and then maybe that would be the thing that drove us away.
“You ready to go in?” he asked, his lips on the tip of my chin, dark eyes looking up at me with playful debauchery that made my whole body hum and my heartbeat quicken.
Who the fuck was I kidding? There was no chance in hell he didn’t know what he was doing with his cock. He had me panting with a single titillating look. A look that stopped my heart, that slowed my breathing, that tilted my earth on its axis. Even if he was awful…as long as he continued to look at me like I was the best thing he had ever seen, to hell with the rest.
I settled my hands on either side of his cheeks, urging him to my lips. “If I die in there—”
“No one’s dying; enough dead people talk.” He chuckled, the sound vibrating his chest while he placed a light kiss on the tip of my nose that made my body shudder as though it was awakening from a deep state of sleep, my limbs undulating into a stretch.
“Besides,” he said after he had gotten out and opened the passenger door for me, “I own the house.” Smug confidence was etched all over his angular face as he held out a hand to me in offering.
The cold November air enveloped me through the open car door. He owned that thing?
“You paid money for that?” I asked with a grimace. “You might want to ask for a refund.”
“Get your ass out of the car, Hemingway.” He laughed, his arresting stare sending a current right into my core that had me nearly tempting him to get back into the Jeep. I could think of a hundred other things I’d rather be doing than walking around that scary-looking house, and he was number one. To my misfortune, he wasn’t budging, he just continued to stand there with expectancy.
All right, I wasn’t getting out of this one.
My eyes flitted from the gloomy house back to the crucifix that hung around his rear view mirror. I reached out and unlatched it.
“What are you doing?” Bemusement sent his mouth into a lopsided smirk.
“Just for good measure,” I muttered, wrapping the beads around my fist twice. I was not a God-fearing woman, and I hadn’t set foot inside of a church since Holly Jane died. But Dad had believed in this shit, so that by extension had to count for something. And the crucifix to Freddy Krueger was like garlic to a vampire…right?
“Jesus isn’t going to save you, y’know.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Shut up, Slim,” I said, accepting his hand, allowing him to pull me out of the Jeep.
He kept my hand trapped in his, his fingers looping around mine, his hip checking the door shut. Then he led me to the door, rolling off into a steady stream of consciousness. He pointed out the things he wanted to improve on the exterior. New windows, restore the door, add on a porch, a whole new garden bed.
The stench inside the house was a pungent combination of stale and musky air and…well, dead things. Still, I loved the animation in his face, the scintillating rumination that lit up his eyes as he used a flashlight he had pulled from the vehicle like a laser pointer.
“What would you do in here?” I asked when we stopped in what I could only assume had once been a kitchen. Cabinet doors hung from their hinges, no appliances were present, the linoleum under my feet worn. Motes of dust danced in the moonlight that gleamed through the windows in brilliant whitened beams that acted as our only source of illumination save for Sean’s flashlight.
“There’s definitely hardwood under there,” he said, kicking at a loose edge of linoleum. “We’ll pull this up and then see what we can salvage. I let Penelope come up with the plans for the last kitchen,” he confessed with a nervous laugh. “I hate being in here.”
“Why? You love cooking.”
“Exactly,” he said with a shrug, regret lining his face. “Every kitchen I enter is another reminder of what I never did.”
My expression crumpled at that. “But most people are in a kitchen every day.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of a fucked-up position to be in.” His admission left him appearing sheepish. “I guess I’m a bit of a masochist.”
“Or just human,” I said with a shrug. I could understand his stance. The conversation made my thoughts turn to the desk in my apartment, the one that buried my secret.
“I wrote a book once,” I offered.
He turned, looking at me seriously. “Oh, yeah?”
I nodded, rolling my lips together as I considered the consequences of my confession.
“What did you do with it?”
“Collected rejection letters like Penelope collects designer handbags.”
His face fell, and I could tell that hadn’t been what he had wanted to hear. “I’m sure those fuckers will regret that some day.”
I doubted it, but it was a nice thought.
Sean jerked me forward, I collided into his hard chest, my arms going around his waist. On instinct, I inhaled his scent, loving the burn as it settled in my sinuses, taking the edge off my busy mind that went everywhere it wasn’t supposed to.
I didn’t like thinking about my failures.
“C’mon, let me show you the rest of the house.”
“Told you that nothing would happen to you in there.” Sean said thirty minutes later as we were climbing back into the Jeep.
“You had to pick a spider as wide as an ice cream cone off of me,” I reminded him, dislodging the thought of the spider that had crept up my pant leg until it grazed the tips of my fingers, making me flip my shit. Arachnid incident aside, the rest of the tour had been uneventful.
“You didn’t tell me you were afraid of spiders.”
“You didn’t tell me we were coming here. And I wasn’t afraid. Just surprised.”
“Right, except no one flails their arms like that when they’ve got a spider on them unless they’re afraid.” A smirk edged the corner of his mouth. That was my favorite smile, the ones he tried to fight, the ones that never quite materialized. I knew those near-smiles were just for me.
His hand stretched out and settled on my knee, his other hand loose on the steering wheel of the Jeep as we drove in silence back toward The Advocate. Today had been such a strange day. I hadn’t known what to expect or feel
after ten years without my sister, but my mind kept considering that maybe Sean’s presence in my realm of reality was Holly’s divine intervention…a gift from beyond the grave. A sign that it was okay for me to experience what she hadn’t.
And that she was okay with me moving on with my life, too.
I relaxed against the seat, my eyes growing lidded as a calm I couldn’t recall ever having experienced before swept over me. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make the drive back to Boston, and I considered taking a catnap in my car before I attempted it. This night had lessened nearly every ounce of strain that had been settled in the vertebrae of my back, knotted my shoulders, and made my chest constrict. Part of me didn’t want it to end.
I would never forget my sister; I would love and miss her forever—but it didn’t feel like her death had to be the epicenter of my identity anymore, either.
“Shit,” Sean muttered as the car came to a standstill. I wasn’t sure how long I’d had my eyes closed, or if I had inadvertently dozed off.
I stirred in my seat, but his hand tightened around my knee, stilling me. I didn’t like the unspoken message in the tension of his grip. My eyes flew open, and I felt my body grow leaden.
We were back in The Advocate’s parking lot.
And we weren’t alone.
Author’s Note
Dear readers,
Before you send the calvary and pull out your pitchforks to come after me for that cliff-hanger ending, hear me out…
I never intended for Mirrors to be a trilogy.
When I went into writing this novel, I had a very clear and concise understanding of how the beginning, middle, and end would work. What I did not expect was that the background characters would begin speaking to me as I was writing–that their voices would become just as loud, as just as urgent as Sean and Raquel’s. I didn’t foresee that this universe connected with other ideas I had brewing in my mind, that events in Mirrors would impact these other future storylines, too.
